A story of family, fandom, and finding freedom in the stands of Catanzaro’s Ceravolo Stadium.
There’s a certain kind of love that doesn’t ask for attention. It’s quiet but ever-present—found in small rituals, local routines, and lifelong commitments that stretch across generations.
In Catanzaro, a city in the south of Italy that spills down the hills towards the Ionian Sea, that love often wears red and yellow, and it calls the Stadio Nicola Ceravolo home.
For Romana Monteverde, that love began early, hand-in-hand with her father.
“My love for Uesse was born thanks to my Dad,” she says, “who took me with him since I was a child, first in the stands, and then on the field to take pictures.”
That bond between football and family is hard to separate in Calabria. And Romana’s story is both intensely personal and entirely familiar to many in the region.
Catanzaro might not shout as loudly as the big names in Italian football, but the support it inspires is deep, emotional and full of pride. “From the fields of the Serie C2 to today in Serie B,” Romana says, “for 14 years I have combined my work with my passion for the football team of my city, trying, through my shots, to convey all the emotions that I experience during those 90 minutes.”
Those 90 minutes don’t just belong to the players on the pitch—they’re shared with the faces in the stands. “In addition to the match, my maximum attention is often directed to the fans,” Romana explains. “To their expressions, to their rituals, always the same. I like to observe them tense, happy, anxious and ecstatic, immortalising the radiant children who enter the stadium, in their grandfather’s hand, fills my heart.”
There’s something cinematic about that image—a wide-eyed young child stepping into the stadium’s noise and colour with their grandfather guiding the way. In Calabria, this is heritage.
“There is no place for me where I feel better than at the stadium,” she says. “I feel free to be able to express myself, seeing beauty wherever I turn.”
Ask Romana about her favourite memories as a Catanzaro supporter, and the response is instant and vivid.
“I have endless memories linked to the fans,” she says, “from the lost playoffs to the immense joy of the last promotion to Serie B. The derby victory in Cosenza is certainly one of my best memories, together with the arrival in the city of the team, after a game behind closed doors that had mathematically decreed our promotion to Serie B.
Photographing the shining eyes of the people, their screams of liberation after almost twenty years of Serie C is something I will never forget.”
In this part of the world, football isn’t just football—it’s the pulse of the city.
The Stadio Nicola Ceravolo is tucked right in the centre of Catanzaro, and on matchdays, the streets around it fill up long before kick-off.
“The fans are super warm,” Romana says. “The curve manages to involve the entire stadium for all 90 minutes with constant roars throughout the match.
“The fans come from almost all over the province and also from other cities in Calabria, involving thousands of people in the Stadio neighbourhood already many hours before the match.”
And then there’s the pre-match ritual—less choreographed than it is deeply ingrained.
“The pre-match for us is a real ritual experienced by each one with their own habits and traditions,” Romana tells me. “Such as drinking at the Rock Bar or eating the typical Morzello already before midday!” There’s no airs and graces, just a passionate local culture shaped by routine, resilience, and real connection.
The home curve—where the ultras make their noise—is led by Ultras 1973. But as Romana notes, the crowd is broad and multi-generational. “Ours is a varied fan base, of all ages, with about 8,000 spectators per game, even in Serie C!”
In the wider Calabrian context, football plays a particular role—it’s both a unifier and an escape.
“In Calabria, football is the most loved and practised sport,” she says. “A bond that is often passed down from father to son; football is seen as a desire for rebirth and social redemption. A hub of aggregation and glue between the various generations, being one of the few escape routes in small cities like those in Calabria.”
It’s not hard to see how the weight of history sits on the shoulders of clubs like Catanzaro. This is, after all, the first Calabrian team to reach Serie A. “With Massimo Palanca!” Romana adds. “Despite the disappointments and bitterness of the years to come, the attachment to the colours and the shirt are feelings that have never faded.”
And as with most footballing landscapes, it’s the derbies that turn everything up a notch. “The most hotly anticipated derby is the one against Cosenza,” she says.
Romana’s photographs—candid, expressive, human—capture what can’t always be written down. There’s emotion in every frame, because there’s emotion in every match. And at the heart of it all is a woman with her camera, her hometown, and the freedom she finds inside a stadium full of stories.
All our thanks to the wonderful Romana Monteverde